Search - Bruce Cockburn :: Inner City Front

His 14th Album

Cletus J. "Bubba" Huckabee Jr. | Chesterfield County | 12/16/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"(fourteenth album, a.k.a. The Toronto Album)

(56.06 minutes)



This one was the big push for Bruce Cockburn - a big push in the direction he started traveling during Humans a year earlier. Humans marked the advent of the electric music, but Inner City Front was electric and it clicked. I can't rightly say that one is superior to the other, but Inner City Front is the Jazziest album he ever released and it works. Jazz is difficult, good Jazz anyway, and Bruce and the band managed to pull it off in style.



If you are contemplating a purchase of this here album, and I recommend it highly, then my humble (but astute) opinion is that you'd be better off getting the re-mastered version with the extra cuts. It comes out to almost an hour of wonderful music and includes the tunes "The Light Goes on Forever" which was until 2002 only available as a B side on a 45, and "The Coldest Night of the Year" which wasn't so rare, but a lot of folks didn't have it until 2002.



I am aware of a lot of folks that refer to this as his "Toronto Album" because of all the influence the city had on the music. He also manages to drop a number of Toronto-area place names in to the lyrics (St. Andrew, Kensington, Yonge Street, Scarborough) but mainly he describes the city more generically as if he was gazing out some unidentified window at the cityscape and wrote a song about what he seen. In fact, his look-out-the-window-and write-a-song-about-what-you-see technique was at its panicle with this album. If you ain't never heard any of them tunes, then don't be put off by the idea. Bruce manages to look out windows and make some interesting, insightful observations based not only what he sees, but the emotion interwoven in to the vision. It is the interplay of human beings that he sings about, even after looking out a window and seeing a man standing beside a telephone booth. The man must have a story, and that's woven in to the lyrics.



I can't praise this album of work enough and I hereby give it the Huckabee Seal of Approval for all around musical pleasure and ambiance. The aural quality is top notch even today, and the infusion of Jazz into the work of a rocking folkie comes off beautifully. Go ahead on and buy this one first if you ain't never before heard any of his work because this is as good a place to start as any and even if you never again get any of his music, this one will be one of the discs that finds its way in to your player time and again. The Huckabees especially like this one to be playing on Saturday mornings when we get up and commence to doing chores around the double wide trailer because it fills the trailer with a pleasant. Melodious atmosphere that takes some of the drudgery out of the chores. In fact we can't get Junior to hose the chicken droppings off the entryway unless this album is playing - he claims it is the only thing that will get him to do it, that and the promise that his Mama will fix up some grits for breakfast later in the morning.





"

Good songs, but production is too 80s for me

j.r. | brooklyn | 09/25/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Some of the other reviewers have urged newcomers to Bruce Cockburn not to start here, but I've just tried this record after years of loving and recognizing the intricacies of BC's folkier stuff and I STILL can't really handle it. Those drum machines, those synthesizers... ack. If you listen to late-70s early 80s jazz and like it, never mind my criticisms. I recognize some of this music, especially the track 'Radio Shoes', as smart, but I prefer all my cockburn as earthy as possible, so I will play this CD hardly ever. 'You Pay Your Money And You Take Your Chances' is a great song, ignoring the production (i partly also like it because it brought Kensington Market, where I used to live, back into my mind vividly) and I think he ought to record it again, put out a copy without the 80s sound.



New to Cockburn? A lot of his most famous records were recorded in the late 70s through the 80s and therefore suffer from 80s production, but he has some gorgeous acoustic-guitar-based folk records from the early 70s you ought to check out, primarily Sunwheel Dance, High Winds White Sky, his first LP Bruce Cockburn, and the live record from that early period, Circles In The Stream. They have guitar work as mesmerizing as Leo Kottke's, combined with a creative melody sense Nick Drake fans will like and early Bruce's unironic hippie lyrics. One of his more recent folk records, Charity of Night, is also recommended, as the least overproduced of his 90s stuff and his most engaging songs. Looking forward to hearing "Speechless", too."